Black Panther Party stalwarts to celebrate 1966 founding in Oakland, programs that aided the poor

The legacy of the Black Panther Party lives on six decades after its founding, in the work of a Seattle medical center started to address systemic health disparities in the African American community, particularly among Black children.

Originally known as the Sidney Miller Free Medical Clinic in 1969, it put into practice the national Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program to uplift African Americans as the Black Power movement gained momentum. Now, as the Carolyn Downs Family Medical Center, it, along with the affiliated Country Doctor Community Clinic, sees tens of thousands of patients in a year.

As the celebration begins Thursday for the Black Panther Party's Oct. 15, 1966, founding in Oakland, California, former members are looking beyond the iconic black leather jackets, berets and clenched fists to highlight programs aimed at healing disenfranchised and forgotten communities.

From free medical clinics and pushing nationally for sickle cell anemia testing to providing free breakfasts for children and community schools promoting education and literacy, the Black Panthers understood what was needed during the racially turbulent 1960s, said Fredrika Newton, widow of co-founder Huey P. Newton.

“We sought to meet the basic needs of the Black community, not only the Black, but all oppressed communities,” she told The Associated Press Tuesday. “Children were going to school hungry. People couldn’t get medical care. People were sleeping in the streets, just like today.”

A planned four-day conference this weekend in downtown Oakland includes a gala. Surviving original members and other Black Panther Party veterans are expected to attend.

Co-founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale were students at Merritt College in Oakland, where they formed the Panthers during the Civil Rights Movement. Both became active in Bay Area politics during the mid-1960s and believed the Civil Rights movement may have addressed the plight of Blacks in Southern states, but it failed to bring about any real change in the U.S. West and North.

With Newton as minister of defense and Seale as the group's chair, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense advocated for political and economic empowerment and initiatives to improve life for the city's Black residents in addition to standing up to what they saw as racist and heavy-handed policing in the Black community.

“We knew that Black people were getting brutalized by the police," said Fredrika Newton, who joined the Black Panther Party in 1971 after meeting Huey P. Newton. "We wanted to make sure that they were getting educated and taught how to protect themselves.”

Confrontations with law enforcement — broadcast to households across the country — galvanized Black support for the organization but also worried many white people. Seale, declaring that the Second Amendment right to bear arms also applied to Blacks, led a small group of armed Panthers in 1967 into the California state legislature.

The Black Panther Party was targeted by the FBI, which put its leaders and members under surveillance and operated a yearslong disruption and discrediting campaign.

John “Bunchy” Crear was caught up in the maelstrom of race and politics sweeping across California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Crear, along with some friends, began attending Black Panther political education classes in 1970. He joined at age 19.

“I was at home in my bedroom listening to my music when my mother comes in and says two white gentlemen from the FBI were in the living room wanting to talk to me,” recalled Crear, 74, who lives in Houston. “I walked in and there were the men in black. They asked if I was a member of the Black Panther Party, then pulled a book out with photos asking if I knew this person, if I knew that person.”

“'Well, John, if you stay in school and get you a good job, you’ll never hear from us again,'” Crear said the men told him before leaving.

The Black Panther Party purchased buildings and homes that served as safe houses and centers for their community survival programs, which mostly addressed food insecurity, lack of healthcare, unequal education and other issues in Black communities.

Chapters were started in about 70 other cities. The chapter in Seattle started one of the 13 original Black Panther Party-founded healthcare clinics across the country and is the only one still in operation.

“Thinking especially about Black folks in the 1960s and 70s, it was impossible to try to address one need and not all because they were vulnerable and under threat in so many areas,” said Brandy Taylor, chief executive of the Carolyn Downs Family Medical Center and Country Doctor Community Clinic.

“It wasn’t just about medical care. It was about free speech, social services, food security and knowing your rights. There were so many doors closed that you couldn’t survive without addressing them all," she said.

The Black Panther Party folded in 1982 after years of police surveillance, as well as dwindling national membership, infighting, allegations of embezzlement and scandals in which Huey P. Newton was implicated and criminally charged.

Newton’s addictions to alcohol and drugs overtook him. He was murdered in Oakland, California, in 1989 by a drug dealer.

In 2021, a bronze bust of Huey P. Newton was unveiled in Oakland.

However, some see similarities in why the Black Panthers were started with the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement following the 2013 acquittal of the man who killed Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager in Sanford, Florida.

“We want to let young people know exactly what we did and what could be done,” said Fredrika Newton, who also is president and co-founder of the Huey P. Newton Foundation.

“This is not a blueprint for what they can do now, but they can certainly see what we did, take what we did, apply them to the conditions today and organize," she said. "Organize around the needs that exist today.”

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Williams is a Detroit-based member of AP's Race & Ethnicity team.